by Peter Helton
She had meant today to be about a new beginning, a new post-Louise era. She would no longer live to please others, she could be cultured in her own right. Tonight she had gone back to her life drawing classes, which she had neglected for two whole terms. Snapping off the rubber band that held the charcoal sketches from tonight’s class she smoothed them out on the floor. Fairfield gave a tired dismissive groan. She had lost the knack. Last year she had kidded herself that she had become quite good at it, tonight she had drawn as though she had never held a piece of charcoal before. It was like a muscle, her tutor had said, you had to exercise it to keep the skill. But she had also promised that Fairfield would get it back if she stuck with it. Last year she had sometimes pinned her drawing up so she could enjoy looking at them for a day or so, this time she let the drawings curl back into a roll and stuffed them into the recycling box in the kitchen. Another glass of wine at the kitchen table and yet another small cigar. Smoking so many now, her hair smelled of cigar smoke. Was she destined to become a cranky eccentric spinster? Was it time to get a few cats? In the centre stood the glass holding the single rose, looking unchanged. There was always the mysterious admirer leaving petrol station flowers on her doorstep. An admirer with limited imagination, Louise had scoffed. Red roses. Triandáphila. A sudden impulse made her grab the thornless rose and yank its flower head off. Ripping it apart she counted the petals. ‘Well, I never,’ she said out loud. She swept up stalk and petals and dumped them in the dustbin. The fingernails on her right hand were rimmed black with charcoal dust. In the upstairs bathroom she turned on the shower and closed the door to warm up the room – she hated showering in cold bathrooms – then scrubbed at her nails until her finger tips felt raw and wondered if she could get away with wearing dark nail varnish and not bother about charcoal dust. She dropped the dark clothes she wore to her classes on the floor and stepped into the shower cubicle. Sometimes she thought this was perhaps the finest moment of the day, warmth, cleanliness, the smell of soap and shampoo, and the day having ceased its demands on her to be this thing or that person. The role play finished, sleep beckoning. Wrapped in a towel she scooted across into her bedroom where a sensible, grown-up Kat had already laid out on a chair the clothes to wear to work tomorrow. Except for her tights.
She knew he was here even before she saw the rose on the bed, smelled the aggressive perfume of his body spray and felt him advance from behind the door. Too late did she try and turn, the knife was at her throat, his body slammed into hers from behind and pushed her forwards, both attacker and victim staggering into the space between the bed and the wardrobe while he ripped the towel off her. It came away all too easily. Pushing her against the wall by her bedside table he breathed hard while he fumbled for her breasts. An almost childish groan escaped him as he ran his hand down her flank and into her pubic hair. Fairfield felt her muscles go taut throughout her body as he tried to force his hand between her legs. Another groan. She felt the pressure of the blade disappearing from her throat. In one swift movement she had turned, picked up the bedside lamp and smashed it into his stocking-covered face. He staggered backwards, caught himself and brandished the knife. Fairfield drew herself up to her full height and bellowed: ‘You fucking bastard. You’d better be good with that knife because otherwise I’ll tear your fucking head off!’ She knew it was a stupid thing to do even while she advanced on him. He slashed the knife through the air in a wild gesture to stop her advancing, without connecting with her skin but then, after only a second’s pause while he seemed beset by doubt, he turned and ran out of the door and down the stairs. She followed him to the top of the stairs and saw him disappear left out of sight. She heard the door to the garden being opened. A moment later the fresh air rushing up from the open door covered her entire body in goose bumps. Fairfield grabbed her dressing gown and hammered down the stairs. She aimed a kick at the door so it flew shut and turned the key to lock it. The glass pane above it had been cut. She yanked out the key and flung it down the corridor. Her airwave radio trembled in her hand while she prepared to call it in. She stared at it, at her hands, then slowly, slowly sank to the ground until she sat on the cold dark kitchen floor. She put down the radio and started crying, howling like a lost animal in the dark.
EIGHTEEN
‘Not the call he made immediately before Lamb’s abduction,’ said the technician. ‘That one was made on the move from a moving vehicle, definitely a van. You can tell from the engine revs and the gear changes.’
McLusky sat impatiently in front of a couple of monitors at a long desk at the Digital Forensics department. ‘But the others were all made from the same place?’ he asked hopefully.
‘They were, and we can nail down the place, too, within reason, of course,’ said the technician. He was familiar with McLusky and knew he was difficult to impress but he could sense the man’s excitement and savoured it.
‘Well? Out with it.’ McLusky felt like shaking the man.
‘Listen to this, Inspector.’ He clicked on a file on the left monitor. Along with the sound from the speakers a multicoloured graph sprang into life on the second monitor. He heard his own conversation with the killer, slightly distorted. The background noises had been enhanced and there was much hissing and crackling. ‘There it is. Did you catch it?’
‘No, what is that? A public address system?’
‘It is. I’ll play it again. Listen out for the word “Neptune”. Here it comes.’
McLusky nearly crawled into the loudspeaker. ‘Again!’ he demanded. The technician obliged. ‘And again.’ At last he straightened up, his expression beatific. ‘And that’s on two of the recordings?’
‘Yup.’
‘You’re a bloody genius. Can you put that on disk for me?’ The technician waggled a CD in a sleeve at him. McLusky grabbed it and practically ran from the building.
In the incident room at Albany Road he scooped up Austin. ‘It’s quieter in my office,’ he said, waving the CD. ‘Close the door.’ He flicked on his computer and inserted the CD. ‘The bastard has a job and I know where, Jane.’
‘Where?’ asked Austin, astonished.
‘You’ll hear it in a second. There.’ He played the first recording. ‘Listen to the background noise, the techies enhanced it for us.’
Austin leant in. ‘Oh, aye, it’s a tannoy. Oh, I know what that is, it’s the bloody open-top tourist buses you get stuck behind. What’s he saying?’
‘Can’t make it all out but he’s talking about the statue of Neptune in St Augustine’s Parade. That bus is going past the statue with a tour guide commenting on it while the bastard is standing in the street, having a fag break and calling me.’
‘There’s plenty of CCTV, we have the times of the calls logged. We’ve got him.’
Three hours later McLusky and Austin sat side by side in front of a monitor, looking deflated. McLusky rubbed his eyes, thinking he had never stared so hard at things that weren’t there.
The operative who had run the CCTV recordings for them gave a slow apologetic shrug. ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen, but that’s all there is.’ Again and again they had excitedly tapped the screen when they spotted male pedestrians using mobile phones at the right time but none of them matched the length of the phone call or the rhythm of the conversation. At any one time, it seemed, there were dozens of people wandering through the area while talking on the phone. ‘There are several side streets,’ the operative said. From the vantage point of the cameras we can’t look into every doorway. He could also be standing inside a building by an open window.’
‘No matter, no matter.’ McLusky tried to sound an upbeat note as they got into his car. ‘We know the area. Two phone calls from the same area. He’s got a job there, I’m sure of it, it’s just a matter of elimination.’
‘There’s an awful lot of people working in that area. Could be thousands.’
‘Yes, yes, yes. Half of them are women. And we know he’s white, so that’s another slice of the population ruled out
.’
Austin, instead of putting his seatbelt on leant back against the passenger door to face McLusky. ‘You think he’s on a fag break?’
‘The bastard works in St Augustine’s Parade and steps out for a fag break. You heard the bus announcement, they always spout the same stuff at the same place. He was near the statue of Neptune each time.’
‘There are also newsagents in St Augustine’s, and sandwich bars. He could be working a few minutes’ walk from there and only go there to buy fags or a pasty.’
Without a word McLusky started the engine and drove off with squealing tyres, throwing Austin back in his seat and creating an avalanche of loose cassette tapes.
The DS scrabbled for his seatbelt. ‘Liam …’
But McLusky had already slowed down to normal speed as they became snarled up in late afternoon traffic. ‘No matter,’ McLusky said. ‘I’ll get him. By Neptune, I’ll get him. If not today, then tomorrow.’
‘You won’t get him tomorrow. It’s the seminar tomorrow, all day.’
‘Marvellous. In the middle of a murder investigation. Bloody marvellous.’
She would be late but she didn’t care. She had to do it now while she felt angry enough. At least Fairfield did expect her anger to subside but who knew, perhaps she’d stay angry, hang on to this fistful of hate she’d felt through her entire life. Her nasal passages were beginning to feel numb; she blew her nose on a crumpled tissue, picked up the next bottle of deodorant, wrenched the cap off and released a stream of sickly alcoholic spray. No, not that one either. She put the cap on and picked up the next. There had been one possible contender early on in her search but now she was no longer sure. She thought she would know it instantly, his smell had been cloyingly rich, as though all his clothes had absorbed the fragrance too. She had opened the windows wide. Then she had nailed her breadboard over the little pane of glass he had broken to reach the key in the lock. Leaving a key in the lock was asking to be burgled. How had she become so complacent? She had decided not to call it in at all. There was no significant DNA anywhere and it wasn’t worth it. She didn’t want it on her record, she didn’t want people to look at her and know that this had happened to her. It would stick to her forever if she made it public, she would forever be the one who had been assaulted by the bastard in her own bedroom. Another spray, another squirt. ‘God, that’s awful,’ she said out loud. She checked the label: Xtreme Temptation. ‘Really?’ She felt a presence next to her and looked up. A young woman wearing the shop’s livery was closely backed up by a store security guard.
‘Good morning Madam. You have been trying a lot of body sprays, the whole shop is beginning to smell of it. We don’t mind you using the tester bottles but it looks like you have tried all those. These are not tester bottles.’ She indicated the row of expensive brands of fragrances Fairfield had been tackling.
Fairfield listened patiently, then held out her ID. ‘I am trying to identify the smell of a deodorant a suspect was wearing. It might help us in identifying him.’
The woman’s demeanour changed and she nodded at the security guard who left wordlessly. ‘That is different. But I wish you had told us about it, we’d be only too glad to help.’
‘I had no idea there were so many of them.’
‘Oh yes, men have quite the same amount of choice as women now when it comes to toiletries, and men are much more conscious of it.’
‘And it saves on soap and water, I expect. You’re OK with me going through these last few ones? If you don’t mind me saying so, half of these smell disgusting, I think I’d prefer sweat.’
The woman smiled uncertainly. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ She walked away down the aisle, straightening a few bottles as she went.
With a sigh Fairfield picked up the next spray and released a small puff, waving it towards her. ‘Jesus!’ She said it loud enough for the shop assistant to turn around and give her a quizzical look. Fairfield waved the bottle of Fatal Attraction. ‘I found the bastard!’ She rushed to the nearest till with it, earning her a thin smile from the shop assistant as she passed her. Fairfield checked her watch. Yes, the seminar was just starting but Trinity Road nick wasn’t that far, she could get there in minutes.
Austin nudged McLusky’s arm when the side door of the conference room opened and DI Fairfield slid inside, making apologetic gestures to the speaker who interrupted his endless welcome speech and preamble ungraciously and told Fairfield to come and pick up an information pack from the desk at the front. Fairfield did so and then disappeared to the back of the room.
‘Looks peaky,’ remarked Austin.
‘She’s lucky Gaunt is still in hospital, punctuality is his hobby. Other people’s, naturally.’
The speaker resumed his delivery, repeating the last three sentences of his preamble to Meeting the Challenges of the New Performance Landscape verbatim and with identical intonation, like a recorded message. McLusky slid deeper on his uncomfortable chair and closed his eyes. The drone of the speaker soon threatened to send him to sleep. The PowerPoint presentation that followed eventually did. He woke with a start, sat up straight and found to his disappointment that he had only been asleep for an instant.
By the time the lunch break arrived McLusky felt he was at breaking point. He knew of course that Denkhaus and civilian staff were holding the fort and that any developments would immediately be communicated to him but his impatience had grown with every dragging minute. Since the canteen staff of Trinity Road was also on strike, outside caterers had supplied a cold buffet which as far as McLusky could see consisted of several types of sandwiches cut into the dreaded triangles, Clingfilm-covered plates of anaemic-looking salads and a selection of crisps.
McLusky would not go near it and pulled Austin away with him. ‘Let’s get out of here and get some real food. We’ve got an hour.’
Austin did not have to ask what the inspector meant by ‘real food’ in theory anything that wasn’t triangular but in practice it meant fish and chips from Pellegrino’s. The weather had turned grey and was threatening rain. They got back into the car with their food parcels but instead of eating his straight away, as Austin was trying to do while being shoogled about, McLusky drove like a man possessed to St Augustine’s Parade. He pulled into a bus stop near the enormous statue of Neptune, turned off the engine and absentmindedly opened his take-away while looking around him as though he had never seen the place before. From here he could overlook a good portion of the parade, the march of nonsensical columns, the repetitive arcs of the fountains. It looked soulless and pompous to him and made him feel desolate. He liked fountains, but this looked more like sewage treatment to him.
‘You think he’ll call again from here and you’ll be able to spot him when he does,’ Austin said, nodding, and stuffed three chips in his mouth. ‘Worth a try.’
‘Yup, s’what I thought.’
‘The place is far too big, though. You can’t see all of it. You’d have to be extremely lucky.’
McLusky attacked his portion of cod with a stab of his wooden fork. ‘You don’t play, you can’t win.’
‘In that case perhaps we should pitch camp at the CCTV hub.’
‘I thought about it but I don’t want to see footage of the bastard, I want to grab him there and then. We’d have to flood the place with police and there’s no guarantee he’ll do anything anytime soon. I’d never get it past Denkhaus.’
‘Overtime.’
‘Precisely, not in the budget. In the new performance landscape we’ll have to catch murderers in a more cost-effective way.’
‘Oh aye, it’ll be two for the price of one next.’
McLusky scrunched up his depleted take-away parcel and lobbed it over his shoulder on to the back seat. He reached for the ignition, took one long angry look at the lunchtime crowd, then started the car and drove off just as a traffic warden approached.
Back in the conference room McLusky struggled to contain his anger. He no longer tried to get Austin to laugh by ma
king whispered sarcastic comments; he sighed and fidgeted. The second half of the training day was entitled Appraisal Systems in Personal Development Reviews and to McLusky the title alone summed up much that was wrong with how they were now supposed to use their time. Two hours into the second half he noticed that he was not the only one fidgeting. First one, then another of the officers excused themselves and left the room. He saw DS Sorbie leave the room as though he had been urgently called away. Several more officers left in a hurry and he heard murmurs of ‘not feeling well’.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Austin.
Just then the speaker, who had droned on robotically like an unstoppable mechanism for the last hour, faltered, lost his thread and then stuttered. ‘I’m afraid I’m … not feeling … all that well. I think we will have to postpone … excuse me.’ He left the room hurriedly, leaving his laptop and projector running. McLusky looked around. There were many pale faces and the room emptied rapidly. He saw Fairfield slinking away and called after her but she either did not hear or ignored him. Soon all one hundred and eighteen CID officers had disappeared, most to find the toilets.
‘And then there were none,’ McLusky said, lit a cigarette in the corridor and strode from the building.
At a very quiet Albany Road station Sergeant Hayes looked mystified at Austin and McLusky. ‘How come you sirs aren’t affected?
Austin nodded his head towards McLusky. ‘Triangular food. The inspector doesn’t believe in it.’
‘It’s not natural,’ McLusky said, shaking his head lugubriously.
